The Boy in the Window
by riant ragdoll
Summary: Since as long as Chihiro could remember, a dream-like boy had been sitting at the window of the house beside her. Ongoing, AU, Miyazaki Film Crossovers
1. Chapter 1

Spirited Away, or any other movie by Miyazaki, does not belong to me.

* * *

_I._

"Mom, you should open the window, so the boy next door can hear."

The incredulous look she gave her smothered any thought on the matter, though. The girl's mother snapped shut a particularly worn children's book- something or another about a weak princess, an evil dragon, and a brave prince. After involuntarily checking through her daughter's single window, she shook her head roughly and released a stern _tut-tut_ through her wide mouth.

"Chihiro, how many times do I have to tell you this: _We don't have any neighbors_." Her mother scolded her, and then leaned over to place the book beside them, on top of a small table.

Chihiro simpered beneath her covers, a watery pout threatening to spring forth tears. She had been tucked away into her bed, a store-bought quilt draped cautiously around her small figure. By this time, she was no more than four years old, and she acted just as someone her age might.

In response to her mother's firm refusal, she bellowed a long moan and flailed two, fragile arms about her.

"Now, Chihiro, you have to calm down." Her mother's voice had risen a few octaves, and she had left from the spot next to her. She crossed her arms and practiced a tedious foot, waiting for her daughter's tantrum to subside.

"Bu- But," Chihiro finally whimpered, this time actual tears dashing down her round cheeks, "He- He's r-right there."

She brought a chubby finger up to her window, and stared out of it with a pair of large, unmoving eyes. Her mother refused to follow her gaze, already bothered enough by her outward behavior.

"It's just your imagination." She firmly stated. "It's time for bed, and we won't be having any more excitement for the night. I've read you your story, and I've tucked you into bed, so do mommy a big favor and go to sleep now, okay?"

Her daughter responded by tucking her head deeper within the blankets, only displaying some pudgy hands that clutched onto the top of its hem. This answer was sufficient enough for her mother, though, and the room's light clicked off. Her mother shut the door behind her silhouette, and she soon disappeared down the house's long hallway.

Chihiro's face suddenly appeared again above her quilt, enabling her to peek out towards the now-closed door. Franticly pushing back her covers, she sprung up from her bed and snatched the book from the table. With all the grace of a toddler, she quickly made her way towards the opposite end of her room.

As soon as she reached her window, she unlocked the bottom of it and struggled to get it to partly open. After she was sure that it had been raised as far as her short arms would allow, she first stuck her book underneath her armpit, and then climbed up onto the flat platform of the windowsill.

Pushing the window up the rest of the way, Chihiro was just the right size to position herself entirely into the window's space.

"Hello!" She called across from her, and the warm smell of the beach rushed to her. "I came out to read you a story!"

The air was disquieted by the dull noise of the ocean, and by the soft sounds that gave way by night-time creatures. But no voice made a response to her greeting; no person awaited her beck and call.

Across the way stood a reasonably-sized house. It was two floors high, and its entire establishment seemed to be slowly crumbling downwards. The front doorsteps had been broken long ago, and nothing lead up to the balcony except for a large, gaping hole, and a few rustic steps. The exterior of it had been encrusted over with clams, barnacles, and sea-life, while the hint of its interior showed that it had been covered by dust, and masses of thickening spider-webs.

Along with Chihiro's, they were the only two houses within a twenty mile radius. And, or so Chihiro's parents insisted upon, the neighboring household had been void of any population for years.

But through her innocent vision, she could catch sight of a young boy positioned behind the window, opposite of her. His calm gaze persistently stared straight ahead of him; no expression would he dawn, no words would he muster. Yet he was real and alive- or at least, Chihiro felt so. The pale skin that she could only see in his stoic face was still flushed, and his hair was still tampered with by life.

Sitting across from her in his frozen habitat, his existence was strongly known by her. Her parents, on the other hand, were both in doubt, and solid denial.

There was a shattered part in which his window gave way. His cropped hair got tangled in the wind that blew timidly through, and when the seaside's sunlight graced the sky, it would come to cover the entirety of his figure in its rays.

Hanging her legs outside her window and feeling the night breeze pass between her toes, Chihiro practically dangled herself out from her bedroom. She picked up the book, and after clutching it to her chest for a few moments of brief, unknown bliss, she opened it up to its contents.

"I'm going to read you a bed time story!" She called over to the boy in the window, and at this statement, she began to slowly read through its pages.

_II._

Years went by. The seasons flew past her eager form, doing with the little girl what it might. She had been assumed home-schooled; although, due to her parents reluctance to teach, or otherwise notice her, she had been left otherwise uneducated, and confused by the world.

Society still lay further away than she could have hoped, and she had only been allowed into the small towns outlining them through endless begging, and pure luck. The bustling of people, the acknowledgements of life, and the collections of merchandise would leave her both mesmerized, and intimidated.

She had never forgotten about the boy next door. His figure still sat beside the window, never aging, and never moving. She had kept her attention to his mysterious presence, and when she had the time, she would read to him the stories and books in which were her only prizes.

But she kept to reading him the book she had herself been read from when she was four, keeping to the clichéd story and its well-worn content. The tradition seemed to rest within its ripped and battered pages, and was kept alive by its abused, strained pictures and smudged words. Chihiro had traced each word over and over in her blossoming mind, and she knew each and every word by heart. The pictures and actions appeared to her in her sleep, unraveling an ending just as old as time:

"... And with the dragon slain, the two were soon married; they lived happily ever after. The End."

She shut the book with the snap of a proud hand, and stored it beside her on the windowsill.

By now, she could no longer fit entirely within the square of space of her window; she opted rather to hang loosely out of it, her head cropped up against the bottom of the glass pane.

Her face, while still round and child-like, had visibly matured. Her brown hair had been tied up into a loose pony-tail, and without the framework, her face was left to look shapely and doughy. Her arms and legs had become long and unruly, and she could hardly keep them from twisting unhelpfully together beneath the window glass.

At that time, she was fourteen years old. The summer had turned into winter, and the cold air soared past her reddening flesh with a turgid urgency.

"Did you like the story?" She asked her companion, once she had allowed a few moments silence to overcome her after her long period of reading.

The boy did not answer her, as he never did. He opted rather to stare quietly into the dark space in front of him.

Chihiro set her book beside her, and placed both her hands on top of her knees. She stared at the boy that no one else could see, and watched as the winter air tugged at his shirt's collar. She sat for several moments, simply observing him.

"Am I crazy?" She inquired, and the hushed question was lost on the strong wisps of air.

She exited the small space of her window, but not before bumping her head into the pane. Groaning in discomfort and stumbling out into her bedroom, she clumsily left from within her bedroom. The heavenly scent of freshly-prepared food and still-hot tea rushed to her as she entered the hallway, and she approached the kitchen in an hungry contentment.

"When's dinner?" She bluntly asked her mother, tipping her head through the doorway and peering in at its occupants.

"Should be soon, Chihiro." Was her response, and Chihiro nodded diligently at the answer.

She was just getting ready to depart, when her father and mother's mingled voices abruptly kept her from leaving the room.

"Actually, Chihiro, I might need something from you."

"We heard you talking upstairs."

Her mother abruptly stopped stirring her soup in order to glare over at her husband. It was only for a moment that she displayed her irritation, though, and with a loud sigh on her behalf, she went back to her prior activity.

"We're about to start dinner, soon." She said to her father, "I'd rather not have you getting overly-excited over Chihiro's... _Thing_."

The way that she said that word, seemingly spitting out as if she had just accidentally bit down onto something disgraceful, left Chihiro glowering from her spot.

"Well, I've told you this before and I'll tell you it again, we _need_ to nip this whole thing in the butt before it gets too out of hand!"

He was sitting down on a chair in the kitchen's corner, and at this point in his speech, he set down his mug in feeble means for emphasis. A wrinkled newspaper draped off of his lap, and his sand-colored shirt showed the stretch of his enormous stomach.

"Honey, I told you not to bring this up before dinner time." Her mother hopelessly insisted upon. He continued, ignored her, as he always did.

"Well, what will we do when we let her out into the world one day, huh? People will go around thinking she's a _lunatic_!" Her father blasted, "We've been nice about this habit of hers since the start- and what has that done for her? She's still up there, talking to absolutely _nothing_!"

"I just don't think we should make a big deal out of it, is all." Her mother muttered, scraping at the sides of the pot. "It's not doing anybody any harm, is it?"

"It hurts _me_! And I'm not sure why _I_ have to suffer for another person's mental in- insta- what's the word?- _instability_! Really now, having her up all night and reading to some imaginary boy? Have you _heard_ her go on about, about her little dragons and princesses? It's absolutely _absurd_!"

"I stopped reading at night." Chihiro tried to throw in, at her meek defense. Neither of them paid her any attention.

"Now, I say we start punishing her." Her father declared, before picking his newspapers up and placing them defiantly in front of him. "It'll do her good, I say."

"We'll talk about this later, honey." And that was all her mother had to say on the topic of Chihiro's '_Thing_', as it had been the time before that, and any of the times before _that_. "But right now I need help getting dinner together."

"What do you want, then?" He grunted at her. It was painfully obvious to Chihiro that he had already lost interest in any sort of conversation.

"The stove is running low on firewood. Could you get Chihiro to bring me some more? She's still young, after all, and I've got a bad shoulder."

"Yeah. Okay." Then raising his voice to bellow up at the ceiling, "_Chihiro_! Come down to get your mother some firewood!"

Muttering her ignored agreement to their demand, she left the house unnoticed. The low click as the front door closed behind her reminded her of her tiny-placed freedom, and her spirit instantly soared at the salty smell and feel of the beach.

A giggle erupted from within her, snagging onto the cold air and echoing down the beach. She flew out onto the sand, bouncing off of the tiny, stubbly rocks and the pink-and-blue shells. She stared out into the green sea, stretching on to a world and place she did not know of.

After dancing spastically along the shore for a few moments, Chihiro bounded towards the woods behind her house. The change from sand to trees was obvious, and the wall of trunks shot up from a few steps away from her house. A man-made path had been peppered through it, in which had been stepped out by a dozen generations before her.

She pushed through the branches with an assumed easiness, only being scratched several times by the rebounding tips. She had grown used to the wood's maze, and even her natural clumsiness didn't allow her to get lost within it. As she wandered throughout it, though, her mind forgot about the initial goal and purpose behind her being there, and she instead lost herself within her own mind.

The snap of a twig broke her attention, and Chihiro stopped in her place. An urgency had started within her, and she glanced around in a fear she could not entirely understand.

In a few moments of wait, a muffled scream sank through the forest, and Chihiro could feel a dread slither about in her stomach. Following the small cry, a mingled snicker soured the winter air. The hollow cackle surprised Chihiro, as it rang not only with one voice, but a collection of conjoined attitudes. In unison, a wretched set of chimes seemed to mock the very world around it.

Chihiro peeked out, her hands clutching onto the tree in front of her. A distance away from her, she immediately spotted a girl, no more than six years old. The young girl punched at the air in panic, her fish-like eyes swimming around in her skull. Bright, orange hair sprouted out of her head, tugging and pulling with the wind.

Holding the girl up, stood a tall, thin woman. Spilling across her back was a mane of glistening hair, folded into a ponytail at the square of her back. A velvet dress draped around her figure, showing off a pair of pointy hips and large shoulders. The only thing clear about her face was the hint of ruby red lips, barely seen behind a checker-print mask. The eye-holes of the mask were blocked by two large surfaces that resembled purple diamonds, cut flat and shining down at the frightened girl.

"Finish her, finish her!" Called a voice in unfiltered glee, different from the joined voices from before. At its suggestion, her hold on the girl grew tighter, and another scream was choked out of the terrified child. "It's impolite to play with your food, after all."

The orange-haired girl had begun to cry, screaming out like a wild animal from within the woman's grasp.

"_Well, if you _do_ insist._"

Chihiro faltered, horrified by the scene. Before she realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself out from before the tree, making herself out as an easy victim for the cannibalistic woman.

"Let her go!" She yelled, the demand rushing through her rigid body.

The woman froze in puzzlement, her checkered mask growing limp in expression. Seeing her chance, the small girl pushed back away from the woman's clutches and fled into the woods.

"_Oh_?" She said, and her mingled voices rattled in a shared bafflement. She glanced curiously around, looking for the source of the command.

"_Oh._"

Her line of sight lay directly on Chihiro then, the eyes in her mask burning hot and wretched. Chihiro stumbled backwards, her beating heart ringing in her heat-soaked ears. Everything in her told her to run, to get away, and to make _haste_- and yet she couldn't move her legs, couldn't get them to co-operate to her simple demand.

"Why, it's another girl!" A voice declared, the same one that had accompanied her earlier. Chihiro could now see that it belonged to none other than the mask that the woman kept to hide her face, the covered mouth quivering with its aspired speech.

"_And it's not just _any_ girl, either._" The woman remarked, "_A _human_ girl._"

"_What_?!" The mask exclaimed, "But then how is she able to see us?!"

"_Well,_Masuku_**, **__there could be a whole _number_ of reasons as to why this human child could be able to see us. It would sure have been a great mystery for us to _crack."

She paused, spreading out a hand full of long, spidery nails out onto the tree next to her. Affected by her sinister touch, the bark in which she caressed split away and rained down onto the mossy floor beneath it. Chihiro trembled.

"_It's a shame that she had to appear during _feeding time_._"

And then all the movement in her legs had returned, and Chihiro was off through the woods. Her feet had grown more dull, though, and she shrank away from the woman and her mask in a terrified, fumbling scamper. As she threw herself through the bushes and the trees and their branches, she could feel the floor toss and turn beneath, as though affected by the resounding sound of laughter behind her.

The woods had begun to rumble, and the winter sky had begun to darken and repress itself. Chihiro refused to look back behind her, afraid that the maneuver would slow down her flee; but she could _feel_ the woman's powerful presence, and _hear_ the cackling grow in intensity and strength.

When she hit the beach, she almost flew head-first into the sloping sand. Quickly regaining herself, she started towards the two, perpendicular houses a little ways away from her. From the corner of her eye, she could only just spot a line of darkness jump out from the woods.

Chihiro didn't know _why_ she did it; if asked, a flurry of answers and their accompanied set of questions would torment her mind. It may have had to do with the sick revelation that her parents wouldn't be _able_ to protect her from something like _this_; it may have also been that she had, in a deep, natural sense, wanted to _protect_ them. It could have even been due to _no_ amount of thinking on her part, and rather just an instinctive, spiritual pull. But even so, Chihiro found herself rushing past her own house, and towards the home that held the frozen boy.

She clawed up the steps, almost falling into the large hole in the center of the porch. The sick slap of wood and sand gave her an idea of how close the woman was behind her, and she forced herself on. Pushing open a door already rotten-through and broken, Chihiro stumbled past a nest of webbings and made desperately up towards a long spiral of stairs.

Each step seemed to crumble beneath her rushed foot, giving away and splintering off behind her. If she'd been in less of a hurry, she could have stopped to take in the gothic surroundings of a place she'd only dreamed of being. But in her hurry, she could only catch glimpse of the shuddering, peeling walls, and the cold, stained floorboards.

"_You can't _escape_._"

She threw open the door that she knew the boy resided behind, practically rolling into its decrepit space. Chihiro slammed the door shut behind her, feeling chunks of wood rebound back and slide away across her skin. Stashing the remnants of a chair into the space beneath the doorknob, she fled backwards, frantically searching the room for its wanted inhabitant.

Against the back wall, Chihiro found him sitting, as he always had been. She flew to his side, her feet skipping off of the molding, unstable floor.

"_Really_?"

The eyes of the boy were, for the first time in ten years, directly on _her_; but their vacant gaze didn't connect. She reached out a hands towards him, a desperate plea for help.

"_Did you actually think a _door_ could keep me back?_"

The laughter only grew louder, and with a crunching drop, the back of the room had sloped downwards and collapsed towards the bottom of the abandoned house. The door blew out of its stand, and there the woman in the mask was, floating above where the floor had only just been.

Chihiro's ragged breath and the sound of her crazed heart leapt into her ears, silencing the crippling noise of destruction. She turned back, and feeling the boards beneath her feet give way, she clutched onto the boy's hand.

"Please!" She screeched, "Help me!"

At these words and her helpless touch, the spirits within him grew livid, and his body seemed to shudder with sentient thought and feeling. His emotionless face became alive, and as Chihiro fell downwards, she pulled the boy towards her. His dark eyes grew large and shimmering, and his mouth opened with alarm. Chihiro stared up in surprise into the boy's sudden liveliness, overcome by the strange sensation when the stiffened, unmoving boy gripped her hand _back_.

The house had melted away, and only blackness and the contrasting shine of red and gold connected with Chihiro. She could feel heat lick at her milky skin, and the poignant smell of sweet flesh rush through her and leave her mind winded. Her senses had begun to leave her, so wrought over by horror.

She could see the grinning figure of the woman beside her, growing more and more, until she took up the entirety of their surroundings. She circled around Chihiro and the boy's falling bodies, a collection of sharp, shining teeth noticeable behind her checkered mask.

There was an _end_ to their pit, Chihiro realized. They were falling into an obscurity of hands and arms, hungrily reaching up towards them and clawing at the heavy darkness. Chihiro could feel herself wrapped up into the boy's embrace, tugged back so she could no longer see their greed.

Chihiro watched as his being transformed into something else- his stilled, remembered appearance turning animal-like and surreal. A tail flung itself out from beneath her, catching the air around them and suspending them in the black, hot unreality. The tormented call of the woman filled the world, and as soon as it had scrambled through Chihiro's ears, they were off sailing towards the sky.

Chihiro gasped for much-needed breath, the boiling atmosphere caught within her throat. She wrapped her arms around the creature that had once been the boy in the window, burrowing her face into his ice-blue fur. A tear-less sob wracked through her, her misery only shown through the vulnerability in her voice.

Warmth radiated from the body beneath her, different from the heat that surrounded her. It sank through her chest and into her heart, relieving her of her trauma. She sighed, nestling her face further into the beast, and fell into a dreamless slumber.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N:**_ _Shorter chapter, because I just wanted to be able to put something out here. For the majority of me writing this chapter, I had forgotten Markl's name, so I had him written as McPoopyPants. Hoohoohoo.  
_

* * *

_I._

Light was the first thing to register for Chihiro. Bright, annoying, _painful_ light.

A direct beam seemed to rest directly on both of Chihiro's shut eyes, burning through the peachy folds and straight into her conscience. Reflexively, she tugged her quilt up and shaded her face.

The second thing to register was the strange material that she ended up clutching and bringing up above her head. The fabric was nothing like the thick, coarse one of her quilt that she had grown to know and love. Rather, whatever she had somehow clutched onto felt soft, and feathery. It was thin, but at the same time, warm and intoxicating.

Her bed didn't feel the same, either. Her parents had never gotten her a new bed frame or mattress as she had grown old, and her once spacious bed had gotten almost unbearably small for her constantly growing body. This mattress almost seemed to consume her, and she sunk into its comfort with an accustomed ease.

In other words, it was all completely wrong.

Chihiro's eyes flew open, their brown gaze blocked by a single, pale yellow blanket. The previous light seeped through it, and Chihiro adjusted her eyes to the morning by first staring sleepily through the blanket. After a good amount of time in this position, she decided that it would be in her best interest to investigate just what was going on.

Feebly, Chihiro shoved the cloth from off of her, rolling up into a sitting position. She glanced at her new surroundings, a shudder wracking through her sore body.

It looked everything like how an average guest room would look. A large bed was shoved to the corner of the room, the remaining space occupied by an oak closet, a mirror, a desk, and a large blood-red carpet. What stood out to Chihiro were the walls of the mysterious room, carved delicately by knives and blades to create pictures and stories across the exterior of it. Chihiro looked sleepily at it, not entirely seeing the gathering outlines of shouting men and winged beasts.

She slid out from her covers, her toes hitting the floor and stumbling across the carpet. Her body hurt, and she made for the door across the room. Every part of her was aching, passing trembles through her body with each small movement she made.

She flinched when she held onto the doorknob, the smooth metal cold beneath her burning palm.

The hallways were the same as her room, both normal and yet inordinate. A matching carpet led down a winding pathway, and walls jut out with designs and patterns alike to the ones in the room she had awoken in. The hallway slanted inwards, as though Chihiro was traveling down a circular tube. She clutched to the walls to steady her compulsive body, holding herself up.

After a long ways of walking and several turns down different, yet identical pathways, Chihiro ended up in a large dining room. She sat herself down at a long table, greedy for rest.

There was nothing but a silver candle placed decorously into the center of the table, but Chihiro could feel that the wood was slightly damp beneath her hand. She guessed that it had just recently been wiped down after a meal.

Her inspection of her surroundings- the room was bigger and more artistic than the previous, designed with chandeliers and extravagant paintings and wall hangings- left her oblivious to the approaching figure. She snapped back to attention when a young voice resounded from behind her, and she turned in fear and surprise.

"_Whoa_!" A boy cried. He looked several years younger than her, still short and childish compared to her. His brown hair was tangled around fat ears, and his features did not match the expensive robes that he wore.

Chihiro looked sheepishly at him, choked by her terror and by her confusion. Instead, she opted to stare wide-eyed at him, clutching tighter onto the back of her chair.

He approached her.

"Are you the human?" He asked bluntly, his face mere inches away from Chihiro's now. Chihiro gulped, before giving a too-exaggerated nod and almost ramming her head into his.

He cried again. "_Wow_! You're the one Master Haku brought?"

Chihiro tried to form a response, but she was interrupted as the boy clutched onto the hem of her shirt.

"You're clothes are so weird!" He remarked, pulling at the cloth. It was one of her favorite shirts, adorning green stripes and fit with a comfortable shape.

"You don't talk much." He said after a moment, looking at her with squinted eyes. Chihiro's lips grew tighter.

"Um." She mumbled, unhelpfully.

"We don't normally have humans here." He informed her, and Chihiro finally found her words again in a tumbling, heartfelt manner.

"Where am I?" She said, too loudly for either of their liking. The boy looked at her, before understanding crept across his face.

He stepped back away from Chihiro then, and Chihiro let out a breath of air at the return of her precious space.

"You've been asleep, haven't you?" He asked, although it wasn't a question that he expected her to answer. "You really don't know what's going on."

Chihiro faltered, before nodding again. The boy didn't notice the movement, staring out at something, or nothing at all in the hallway.

"You're in the Fairy Kingdom." He told her, and Chihiro looked skeptically at him. "You were attacked by something- _someone_, who is very evil." He paused, before continuing. "_We don't like her._" The boy enunciated each word, putting emphasis on the syllables. "You've been asleep for three days. We were worried you wouldn't wake up, because most of the humans who enter the Fairy Kingdom don't."

Chihiro sat still, waiting for him to continue. She could feel a dull pain in her head, and she lifted a hand to tenderly push at her temples, attempting to soothe it.

"But then again, Master Haku said you weren't a normal human. You can see us, after all."

It was all a little strange to Chihiro. The way her parents had brought her up, she had only known the peeling walls of her home and the dark, stretching woods in her backyard. But her ignorance otherwise shaded her from too much alarm and physical surprise, dwindling her discomfort for the strangest of situations. Rather, she had one day hoped that something like this would happen to her when she was seven and eight, walking through the woods and making up the scenes in her head.

But otherwise, Chihiro looked up at the boy through pain glazed eyes, and hesitantly bobbed her head up, then down. The movement only enhanced her headache, though, and she clutched this time a wad of her chestnut hair in an attempt to calm the pain.

"Are you sick?" He asked, taking notice of her state. "Are you okay?"

Chihiro emitted a short whine, before pushing her head down in between her knees.

"Are you dying? Do humans die this easily?" The panic had risen in his voice, making it high-pitched and squeaky. "You might be hungry, you haven't eaten for three days- Can you even _eat_ our food?"

He continued squawking questions at Chihiro as she lay there and massaged her head with two, shaky hands.

Vibrations and shocks laced through her mind, down into her spine, and apart from her muscles. She could feel her shoulder involuntarily twitch, and her body shuddered violently with it. A cold sweat broke out across her palms and her forehead, and she sat there in utter agony with no clue on what she could do.

"Markl? What are you doing in here?"

Chihiro moved her head to the side, just barely letting her look up at the spectacle. A man, someone who looked as though he was somewhere in his twenties, stood in front of the boy. He wore a colorful robe, sewn with thread that seemed to glow in ways that were implausible. Hair as yellow and as brilliant as sunlight caught around his face, and blue eyes glistened out from a knowing, carefully distorted face.

The boy squawked, before rushing over to the new man's side.

"It's the girl!" Markl cried, pointing at Chihiro. "The human girl Haku brought with him!"

The man looked towards her, focusing his bright blue eyes on her trembling body. He stepped towards her, Markl directly beside him with each movement.

"She's up?" He said, subtly astounded. "Why didn't you come and inform me at once about this?"

"I only just found her!"

"Well, it's a miracle that she's even awake." He crouched in front of her, positioning himself beside the arm of her chair. Chihiro stared out from beneath a flexed arm and a tumble of hair, looking at him as a wild animal might at an approaching hunter.

"Don't worry, child. Let me introduce myself: I am Howl, King of the Fairy Kingdom." He paused to place a cold hand onto Chihiro's forehead, before letting it slide down to rest on her cheek. "Your body wasn't made to withstand this reality. You have somehow managed to awaken, but you're still struggling with the change."

Howl stood.

"Markl, go and get the doctors at once. Tell them to bring all the medicine that they have relating to this condition. I shouldn't try to move her, I think it would do more harm than good."

As soon as he was done speaking, Markl was off running down the hallway. Howl watched his retreating figure for a few moments, his face displaying a mentor's smile, before turning back to examine Chihiro.

"Breath, child. Relax your shoulders, don't make yourself tense. It'll make the sickness worse."

Approximately five minutes later, a group of people came trotting into the dining room, following behind Markl. Each one of them were dressed as exotically as Howl and Markl were, and they all bore differing features that made them look almost elvish. They hurried towards Chihiro, crowding around her curled figure.

"Is she still moving? Is she conscious?" One asked, kneeling down and attempting to look into Chihiro's face. Chihiro shied away, tucking her head back down into her knees.

"Yes, she's still awake." Howl said, moving to the other side of the room. His movements were as fluid as water, and Chihiro watched him mold into the background as the rest of the doctors got to work. Other than his appearance, Howl struck Chihiro as a very odd man to be crowned as king of a land.

The doctors pried her away from herself, leaning her up against the back of the chair. One of them gave her an embroidered, dusty pink pillow, and when she clutched onto it, her hand hit what felt like a metal ball on the inside. Another doctor tipped back her head, and set two fingers against her forehead.

"You might feel some discomfort." Chihiro heard someone saying, before another hand forcefully opened her mouth.

She yelped in surprise. She watched in horror as one of the doctors took a vial out from his pocket, the tinted glass sparkling from a glittery substance within it. The bottle was tipped up to her lips, and drained into her yielding mouth.

For the second time that day, a bright light registered behind her fluttering eyelids. It ached like the previous one had, and dove into her subconscious with an assumed accuracy. Along with the returning veil of light, a sense of nonliving hit her. She was no longer in the room with the doctors, or the King, or the probing boy. Rather, Chihiro didn't feel like she was anywhere at all; she floated, absorbed in a blank, white abyss.

And then the pain hit her. A new pain, one not at all like the one she had just experienced. It had left her mind and went into her as a whole, raking through her and leaving nothing still. She felt herself scream out, and faintly noticed her arms and legs fighting the sensation. But as soon as it had come, it was over.

She opened her eyes. Her sight was unfocused, and she blinked the room back into reality. She looked up into peering faces, a group full of opened mouths and arched eyebrows.

"She's with us!" Someone yelled.

"She's okay!"

"Someone get Master Haku!"

The doctors fled the room, still stunned. Chihiro watched, touching the side of her head and noting how little she felt from the gesture. She felt as though she was filled with air, pumped up like a big balloon. But the pain had subsided, and she took relief in that.

Markl bounded up to her, being constantly looked after by a pair of soft, blue eyes.

"You _screamed_!" He said, a boyish interest behind his gaze. "It was _terrifying_!"

"Oh?" Chihiro muttered, slumping forward into the seat.

The pillow was still in her hands, and it tingled in her palms. She pushed it onto the table, knocking the wood with the hard ball inside.

"It was one of the worst screams I've ever heard! Did it hurt?"

"Now, don't pester her so much. She's been through a lot." Howl interjected. He walked up besides him, towering over the other's stumpy body.

"_Alright_." Markl breathed out, sporting an irritated pout.

"We'll let Haku clue you in about everything that's been going on when he gets here. Can I ask for your name, though?"

Chihiro faltered. "I'm Chihiro." She told them, before suddenly standing up from her seat. Her feet pressed against the ground, and she was momentarily happy to have found her balance so easily. "Who is Haku? Everyone keeps talking about him."

"You'll come to find him very familiar." Howl told her, a trace of amusement laced into his speech. The boy looked past Howl's long legs, glaring at her in surprise.

"She doesn't even know who _Haku_ is? Does she know _anything_?" He condescended, crossing his small arms across his chest and burrowing them into his expensive robes.

"Now, don't be rude to her, lest I throw you out into the Human world and see how well you'd do in it."

He gaped. "Don't put me in the Human world, Howl!" Markl begged, grabbing hold of his sleeves. "They're terrible, and they never stop talking, and they're so uncivilized, and they _smell_!"

"Well, then, I think you'd fit right in."

"_Howl_!"

"Come on, be off. You have your studies."

He whimpered at Howl's command, but sauntered off nevertheless. The two of them watched Markl leave the room for the second time that day, left alone together in the wide space.

Chihiro blanked, feeling oddly anxious within Howl's presence. She still had the newly acquired knowledge that the stranger besides her was a _King-_ that could have been enough to make any person feel nervous about the situation. Combined with this, and the calm secrecy that lay tucked away behind his face and gestures, she quietly wished that she could have been anywhere else but there in that moment.

She wondered if she should return to her seat at the dining table, or continue standing besides it. Instead, she opted for a third option, and leaned herself against the carved wood in feigned belonging.

"How long have you been awake?" Howl suddenly asked her, and Chihiro almost slid down the table and onto the floor in her panic.

"Ummmm." She murmured, almost half-way onto the ground. She gulped, before pushing herself up off the table. The tips of her feet hit the ground at a bad angle, and she practically fell on top of Howl's feet.

He looked at her oddly, bewilderment and laughter behind his words.

"You don't _seem_ like a girl that's capable of putting off a curse." Howl said, and Chihiro could hear a small hint of mocking within his tone.

"Especially not one of _hers_."

Images of the woman in the mask flashed before her, and she snapped her posture into an alert one. Her feet stood firmly against the ground, her small hands curled into fists beside her thighs.

"_Who was that woman?!_" Chihiro yelled. She had trouble keeping her voice under her own control; it was either too quiet or too loud, never resting at a place in between.

"Please, calm down. Haku will tell you everything when he's here."

"She almost killed me! She almost killed me, and that boy!" Chihiro erupted, her fingernails digging into the skin of her palms. "Does she belong to your Kingdom? Was she a fairy?"

Howl's blue eyes turned menacing, and his voice became ice.

"_She does not belong here._"

Chihiro froze, fear gluing her to the spot. The back of his robe throbbed, and he clutched his shoulder and yanked at the cloth billowing around him. For just a second in time, it looked as though something had grown out from his back, something that hadn't been there at the beginning.

Howl continued to grimace, keeping his line of sight at the hand folded against his shoulder. "She is not a fairy, and she does not belong in my Kingdom. She is not one of us."

Chihiro stood motionless, unsure of what to do, or to say. She nodded.

A sound came from the doorway, and both of them turned at the entrance of their new guest. A body flew in, its feet darting off of the ground and moving confidently forwards. Chihiro looked up into its face, a realization dawning. She could just barely register the coal black hair before speech bubbled out from a pair of lips that Chihiro knew all too well.

"Hello. I'm glad to see that you're awake." Said the boy in the window, "And I apologize for taking ten years in order to introduce myself to you..."

Chihiro stared into his very much alive, very much _real_ face, moving towards him without her knowing.

"My name is Haku. Thank you for the stories, Chihiro."


End file.
